Before I married my husband, I told him to make sure that he was marrying me for who I was that day, and not for any future changes he hoped to have wrought in me through the “transforming” power of marriage. Though we were both young, I had seen enough unhappy marriages to make me wary of the institution, and who wants to be institutionalized, really? I had no question that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him, but I wanted us to start off with as little illusion as possible. I wanted to know that he saw me, and not some airbrushed version of a girl to be placed on a pedestal. It is easy to fall in love if you believe all the fairy tales and movies. Beautiful women with flowing hair and flawless skin meet muscled men with pure hearts and chivalrous intentions and they ride off to his manor with servants aplenty…

This isn’t to say that I don’t ever try to be any of these three things. I do, especially the last two.

It’s more to say that, for me, surviving in this cissexist, racist, ableist, heteronormative, classist, often fucked up world of ours has involved rejecting the idea that “good” and “bad” are static states of being. I will never be a “good person” because, to me, “good” is not something that you achieve. It’s an ongoing process that never ends.

It is, in fact, almost impossible not to be doing bad things as well as good when you are human and therefore flawed. Especially when you are part of a messed up system, as we all are.

This, to me, is why it’s important to call out bad behavior, or hurtful language, or even…

When I think of all we have talked about in regards to building a relationship, trust and feeling safe over the last few weeks it makes me think of the old hymn “Blessed Assurance” for those of you who may not know it, it goes like this….

We are just incomplete creatures living in the abyss of matter trying to find out footing in this thing called life.

you see what you want to see….

We try and remember the steps taken by the for-bearers who carried the heavy affliction of not knowing exactly what they were doing but never the less valiant enough to take it. They created their own path, their own niche, their own principle of working through the crazy and as the years go by, people see it working and they idealize and put their dreams in THIS enclosed space, trusting and praying that it will work out the same for them as it did for others. They don’t see the struggle, or the tears, the angry “significant other”, the weary parent.

All they see is a success story written on glossy pages of magazines and hear it on prime time television…

I think the biggest motivator of change is one faces rejection. I am not much of a writer am more of that person who has conversations inside my head …yeah a monologue. this monologues supposedly just bring three sides of the coin…yeah i know its two sides. This been my first post this year i will keep it short.